I head straight out of the room before he figures out he didn’t want to send me off, ’cause it’s me who’s supposed to be serving in there all night. I make it outside into the night and grab my head. My green headscarf slips off as I gulp at the air, feeling dirty and ashamed. Am I happy? I want to spit. On top of all the bowing and scraping and yes-siring, now I got to like it too? Am I happy? It’s no kind of question to be asking. I sink to the ground. Am I alive? Am I surviving? That’s all I been hanging on to.

Annie comes up from the kitchen house with a tray of ham and biscuits and sucks loudly at her teeth when she sees me hunched on the grass. “Why ain’t you in that room? Maple gonna have your hide when she sees you out here.” She turns back from where she’s come, and calls out, “Maple. Ain’t she supposed to be in that room?”

Maple peeks her head out from around the kitchen house and, when she sees me, comes storming up to us, hissing for me to get up.

“You supposed to be in there serving.”

“Master said—”

“Don’t you come at me with Master said. Your missus wants you in there, so you better get on back where you supposed to be.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Annie balance the biscuit tray with one hand and swoop down and scoop up my green headscarf with the other.

As she tries to slip it in her pocket, I lunge for it and rip it out of her hands. “Get your thieving hands off my things.”

Annie sucks her teeth at me again. “Can’t nobody know whose it is if you leave it lying around like that.” She turns and marches inside with her tray.

I smooth my hair and retie my scarf. “Master said I can go,” I tell Maple.

“He did? Well, you left. And now you can get yourself back in there and serve the ham and biscuits like your missus said.” She plants her hands on her hips.

All around us the cicadas belt out their call. I think of the last time I lay back listening to them, with Henry on the paddock hill.

I was happy on the hill that night.

Maple pokes at me. “Get on, now. I ain’t gonna be blamed for your laziness.”

The ache of tired in my arms and legs flares as I peel myself off the grass. At the door of the parlor, I hesitate, hearing the men even louder and drunker than a few minutes ago. I brace myself and walk back in.

“There is no way forward but secession. I don’t know about you all, but I won’t have Northerners telling me what to do on my own plantation.” Mister Gantly has gotten red-faced in the time I was gone.

Annie is busy at the far end of the room, putting ham and biscuits on little plates. I cross over to her, pick up the plates and begin to offer them around.